Summarised by Centrist
Broadcaster Duncan Garner says Christopher Luxon’s new KiwiSaver plan finally looks like a policy with substance, but it exposes the Prime Minister’s wider political problem.
Luxon is still talking about decades into the future while voters are stuck in the weekly grind.
Garner says that the “big, bold” shift to a combined 12 percent contribution is less revolutionary than it sounds. There are no new government incentives and no fresh public money.
For employees, that means smaller take-home pay in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. For businesses, it means higher payroll costs during a period of weak growth. And for the government, it lets National look ambitious while shifting the financial burden entirely onto the private sector.
The reform “doesn’t cost them a cent to promise” because it simply forces employers to match whatever employees put in, up to six percent. But it won’t take full effect until 2032.
However, he’s still supportive of Luxon’s move, saying “good on him,” because this is the first time the Prime Minister has “finally decided to grow a spine and swing for something big.”
As Garner puts it, this is the one moment workers can “put a gun to your employer’s head and get six per cent out of them.”
Still, the deeper issue, Garner argues, is timing and relevance. Voters are being asked to sacrifice today for a retirement decades away. “This saving stuff’s all very well,” he says, “but what about now?”
Garner says Luxon “risks looking like a prime minister talking about 2050, while people are worried about Wednesday or Thursday this week.”
